ELT Writers Workshop, JENAM 2009

Immediately after the press conference by Michel Mayor, the reporters from the press conference were led to a writers workshop being presented on the science behind the Extremely Large Telescope.

Some of the subject topics presented were:

Take direct images of exo-planets – produce better resolutions of images

Exoplanet direct detection, direct imaging of a super Earth.

Second case is black holes, but how can we detect them?

Precision Optics, the instruments will be complex and large, the telescope is some 8 years away from completion, what are the key technology placements will the scientists need to make?

There is an industrial scale production taking place of the optics and the instrumentation that will be used on the ELT, which will finish completion of being built in around 8 years time.

Images produced will be 15 times sharper than the Hubble Space Telescope

But how common are black holes, how many black holes exist?

How will we detect the velocity of gas swirling around a black hole

Watching Galaxies Form

• Mergers or ordered rotaion?

• Distinguish via velocity maps